A Ban on Pit Bulls ‘Is not the Answer’ Claims Official
Dog owners in Omaha USA are to face a raft of new restrictions if a proposal is accepted by the city council.
The proposal comes in the wake of a serious dog attack on a 15-month old girl.
Mayor Mayor Mike Fahey: “City government can’t allow our neighborhoods to be places where dangerous dogs run loose and parents aren’t afraid to take their kids for a walk,” said Mayor Mike Fahey.
Mark Langan of the Humane Society echoes Mayor Fahey’s sentiments: “We’re going after the dogs before the bite happens to prevent another Charlotte Blevins situation from happening,” said Mark Langan of the Humane Society.
The proposed dog ordinance will
1.) Restrict the tethering of dogs.
2.) Give Humane Society officials the authority to designate “potentially dangerous dogs,” and require them be spade or neutered, have microchips implanted, and take behavioural classes.
3.) Compel owners of “potentially dangerous dogs” must be required to take a class; have their dogs leashed and muzzled away from their own property; and they must surrender all pets for two years if they or their dog commits three reckless acts within 24 months.
Fahey claims a “potentially dangerous dog” will be any dog that is provoked or not provoked into attackin a person or animal or chases a person on public property.
The Humane Society’s Judy Varner: “If you’re not a respectful pet owner, you don’t have the right to own a pet,”.
However, the proposals don’t go far enough for the mother of the young girl attacked, which sparked these reform suggestions. Little Charlotte Blevins suffered a serious attack by a Pit Bull type dog and her mother would like to see an outright ban on them.
Wendy Blevins: “There’s one pit bull per 68.9 people in Omaha. That’s a lot,.
Omaha’s mayor disagrees, claiming a ban on pit bulls isn’t the answer.
“I guess I’m a biased person. My daughter is an example of why there should be a ban,” Blevins protests.
“While these changes will not please all people, they will save Omaha families the pain and suffering others have experienced and are facing,” mayor Fahey explians.
The proposals could be adopted by the city as soon as October of this year.
The are detailed as such:
* It would be against the law for a pit bull to be outdoors unless it were confined in a securely fenced yard or unless the animal was muzzled, placed on a leash and under the control of someone 19 years of age or older.
A “potentially dangerous dog” designation would be established.
* The Nebraska Humane Society would designate dogs as “potentially dangerous” based on their behaviour. This would apply to all dogs, not just pit bulls. The definition of potentially dangerous behaviour would include inflicting injury that does not require medical treatment, menacing displays or a tendency to attack.
Such a dog would have to be fixed, receive a micro identification chip and the owner and dog would have to attend classes. Also the dog would have to be muzzled and placed on a leash off of the owner’s property.
No dog could be tethered outdoors in excess of 15 minutes at any one time unless a trolley system were used. That trolley tethering couldn’t last more than an hour. Excessive tethering is thought to anger some dogs.
K9 Magazine says:
Whilst it is progress, at least, to see that an outright ban on an entire breed has been rejected, rightly, the proposals do still seem to have been put together in haste and there are some obvious, gaping flaws that leave ambiguity in ambundance with regard to implementation.
How can a dog be classed as dangerous if it is provoked? Are there any animals on the planet that are incapable of acting with aggression if they are provoked?
The most worrying, in fact laughable of the proposals is this:
The Nebraska Humane Society would designate dogs as “potentially dangerous” based on their behaviour. This would apply to all dogs, not just pit bulls. The definition of potentially dangerous behaviour would include inflicting injury that does not require medical treatment, menacing displays or a tendency to attack.
What is the legal definition of ‘acting menancingly’? Displaying a ‘tendency to attack’ must, surely, mean a dog who has attacked? That is the only possible definition that can be given to properly declare a dog as having ‘a tendency to attack’, if we are moving to the territory of judging a dog based on whether a human, a human employee of a humane society declaring whether a dog ‘might’ attack, well we may as well decalre every single dog in this category. Every dog, on earth and without exception *might* attack given a particular set of circumstances. Accepting that this proposal takes no mitigation for provokation, what we have here is a law that says a person can declare whether a dog *might* attack and not factor in any of the circumstances that lead up to that attack. Which, theoretically, means all dogs, without single exception, could fall foul of this ordinance.
So whilst it is acknolwedgement that this ordinance has not gone down the obvious route of reaching for the Pit Bull banned card – something known as breed specific legislation, a failed concept and one which operates in the UK naitonally – the proposal itself is still glaringly short sighted and completely unenforcable.
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